A man of distinction

LIMA — When Lima’s St. Paul African Methodist Episcopalian Church celebrated its 150th anniversary, a commemorative program handed out to church members displayed a full-page picture of a man who was never a pastor of the Lima church. But it was at St. Paul AME that he found the calling that directed life.

Born in 1917, John Ellsworth Hunter was one of six children of John and Ethel Hunter. His parents stayed in Lima until they died, but the young John pursued a destiny that would take him far from home and make him a player in the dominant issue of his times.

In the first part of the 1900s, news of the African-American community was published in the paper in a column called “In The Colored Circles.” The Hunters names appeared there as frequent guests at receptions and parties along with the Davenports, Cotmans and Buggses.  But while still in his teens, John’s name on its own also began to be in print, promoting him as preaching one of the services of the week at St. Paul AME. His many — and apparently popular — appearances led him to be given a preacher’s license at St. Paul AME and later to be ordained as an itinerant elder at St. James AME Church in Cleveland.

What did this young man, scarcely out of boyhood, preach about? The congregations of those early years are gone, but as a mature minister, he was described by his daughter as thoughtful.

“In terms of his preaching style, it is safe to say that his sermons were consistently thought- provoking. (They were almost lecture style.) He was an academician, and his sermons provided food for the mind, heart, and soul,” remembered Cynthia Hunter Spann.

He was busy with congregations in the state, but wanted more. The Lima paper passed on news that he was enrolled at Wilberforce University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and followed it up with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Oberlin College in 1948.

In addition to the rigors of the academics involved in divinity degrees, Rev. Hunter was absorbing the history of Oberlin College, a school known as an “abolitionist college, ” a stop on the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves, and among the first to admit African-Americans and women as students.

His studies and background would serve him well as his graduation led to a move that took him to another St. Paul AME — this one in Des Moines, Iowa. While there, he become chaplain for the Iowa State Legislature.

His life became busy because in addition to caring for a congregation, he found time to marry Delorez Allen and begin a family. They married June 21, 1950, after being introduced by her aunt at St. James AME in Cleveland, where he was youth pastor. Allen was raised in the AME church, with her uncle serving as a bishop.

After they were married, Hunter worked as a librarian at Wilberforce and, later, was a faculty member there.

In 1952, the Lima paper announces the teenage preacher will be giving a sermon back where he started. Now he looks like a grownup.

In his photographs, he gazes with dignity directly at the camera, mustached, wearing clerical collar and robe. He looks like a man serious about his work. He was not tall, but he made an impression. The colleagues he accumulated as the years went by came to look at him as not only a reliable friend and confidante but as a professional role model.

A colleague who taught him at Wilberforce and remained a friend recalled that as a student John was “conscientious, diligent and eager to learn. I was struck by his sense of purpose and capacity for growth. Both in and out of the classroom he demonstrated a gentle manner, a quiet demeanor and an optimistic outlook.”

In 1956, he took over First AME in Gary, Ind. At that time Gary was one of the first cities in the country to act out what would become pattern in many American cities — growing African-American resistance to inequality. Gary struggled with housing laws, white flight and segregated schools. In 1964, Hunter was named to a Blue Ribbon Human Rights Committee that turned around a divided city council and passed local civil rights laws. That’s the same year he took his young children to Washington where they all heard the “I Have A Dream Speech” delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King.  The Indianapolis Star named him one of the state’s “Ten Most Outstanding Citizens,” and the NAACP gave him the “Ovington Award.”

In June 1968, 30 years after getting his license to preach and less than three months after the assassination of King, The Lima News reports that Hunter will be a delegate to the World Council of Churches in Sweden in the following month.

There is no local announcement four years later when Hunter takes over the 2,200-member St. Stephen AME church in Detroit, another city struggling with racial divide. During the following eight years, the church burned its mortgage and added hundreds of members.

His quiet determination led to his being elected bishop of the AME church and sent him on what would be his final challenge. In 1980, he was assigned to South Africa, a nation still governed by apartheid.

Then 62, Hunter told Jet magazine about the challenges ahead: “Black people in South Africa are at about the stage they were in this country 200 years ago. We’ve got a long way to go.”

As presiding prelate of the huge district, he coordinated the efforts which led to a victory in the South African Supreme Court that granted the AME Church complete rights in Soweto. That was one of a long list of accomplishments cited in his obituary. Hunter returned to Detroit late in 1984 and died in January 1985. His obituary filed in the Oberlin College Archives called him one of the outstanding religious leaders of his generation.

His children carry on his legacy of education and social impact. Daughter Spann is a social service provider in Dallas. Older sister Marion Lynn Boynes is a music teacher in Indianapolis. Younger brother John Joseph Hunter heads First AME in Los Angeles. His widow, now living with Spann, is a librarian.

In July 1986, the city of Detroit remembered the quiet, gentle revolutionary by changing the name of Stanford Avenue where St. Stephens AME church stands to John E. Hunter Drive.